Braiding Sweetgrass
Quillwood Academy founder Eric Garza will facilitate an online reading group centered on Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. This reading group begins with an orientation on Sunday, May 19, at 12:00 pm US Eastern Daylight Time. To find out what time this is where you live, type your city, town, or time zone in the “Add locations” box at this link. Following this orientation the group meets at this same time every other Sunday through July 28. Registration for this event is offered by donation. To sign up, type the amount you want to pay in the “Choose price” box below, add the reading group to your shopping cart, and check out. If you want to pay for your registration using a personal check or money order, email eric@quillwood.org to arrange payment. Registration for this event will remain open through the end of the day on Friday, May 17.
Read a more detailed description of the event, including its schedule, expectations, and a suggested sliding scale by scrolling further down this page.
Description
As the unsustainability of consumption-based societies becomes more apparent, people are waking up to the reality that we must learn to live in a different way. As a mixed heritage person (partly Euro-descended and partly Native American), one place Quillwood Academy founder Eric Garza turns for this learning are writings and other media offered by people with indigenous heritage. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants has been particularly inspiring. Braiding Sweetgrass was published in 2015, made the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post’s best-seller lists, and was named among the “Best essay collections of the decade” by Literary Hub. The book is divided into five sections, which we will read over 10 weeks.
This is a wonderful reading group for those who want a break from the bad news that proves so profitable to mass media outlets, and who instead wants to immerse themselves in messages of connection, reciprocity, and regeneration. It is also a great reading group for those who want to rub virtual elbows with others who find value in these things, who can appreciate an opportunity to work through a book like Braiding Sweetgrass slowly, methodically, and deliberately in the company of other kind and curious souls.
From the author’s website:
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In addition to Braiding Sweetgrass, she also wrote Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She is also the founder and director of SUNY’s Center for Native People’s and the Environment. As a writer and a scientist, Robin’s interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in botany from SUNY ESF, and MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin, and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge, and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.
Scroll down for a more detailed schedule, what to expect when you register, a brief bio of the event’s facilitator, and the reading group’s pricing and refund policy. Please note that you will not receive a copy of Braiding Sweetgrass with your registration. If you desire a physical copy of the book, consider supporting one of your local booksellers by buying it from them. Most can order the book for you within a week or two if they do not have it in stock. Electronic and audio versions of the book are also available. Email Eric at eric@quillwood.org if you have questions.
Schedule
All meetings of this reading group will be facilitated using Zoom conferencing software. To participate you will need to install the Zoom app on your computer or phone. All meetings take place on Sundays at 12:00 pm US Eastern Daylight Time. Click this link and type your city, town, or time zone in the “Add location” box to check what time this is where you live. Each meeting will last approximately 2 hours and will include a mix of large group discussion and smaller breakout groups.
Meeting 1 — Sunday, May 19, 2024: This first meeting serves as an orientation. We will use it to go over group agreements, logistics, and to get to know one another. At the end of the meeting Eric will invite participants to read the book’s Preface as well as Part 1: Planting Sweetgrass (Chapters 1-6) before our next meeting. Study questions will be provided to invite deeper reflection.
Meeting 2 — Sunday, June 2, 2024: We will use this meeting to discuss Braiding Sweetgrass’s Preface, and Part I of the book. The study questions provided at the end of our last meeting will offer some structure for the discussion, though we will likely explore other topics and themes too.
Meeting 3 — Sunday, June 16, 2024: We will use this meeting to discuss Part 2 of Braiding Sweetgrass, titled Tending Sweetgrass. This section includes Chapters 7-11.
Meeting 4 — Sunday, June 30, 2024: We will use this meeting to discuss Part 3 of Braiding Sweetgrass, titled Picking Sweetgrass. This section includes Chapters 12-17.
Meeting 5 — Sunday, July 14, 2024: We will use this meeting to discuss Part 4 of Braiding Sweetgrass, titled Braiding Sweetgrass. This section includes Chapters 18-25.
Meeting 6 — Sunday, July 28, 2024: We will use this meeting to discuss Part 5 of Braiding Sweetgrass, titled Burning Sweetgrass. This section includes Chapters 26-31.
All meetings will be recorded, and those recordings will be made available to participants within a few days. To protect the privacy of those who attend the Zoom meetings, these recordings—and screen captures taken from them—should not be shared with anyone not registered for this study group. Attendance and participation in meetings are encouraged, but not required. Recordings will remain available for 30 days following the reading group’s end.
What To Expect
When you sign up for this event, Eric will provide a structured space for you and other participants to explore the topics and themes presented in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass. Like all Quillwood Academy events, this reading group will be facilitated in English and will likely attract participants from across the English-speaking world. Participants will come from various ethnic, cultural, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds, and bring to the event a diverse array of life experiences, identities, and worldviews. They will bring with them many styles of communication, as well as different goals and intentions. With this in mind, please allow for cultural differences in communication styles, speaking patterns, and how people use various words. During the event’s orientation Eric will ask participants to abide by a set of agreements to guide our in-meeting conduct. Please read through these before you sign up so you have a sense of what will be expected of you.
When you sign up for this event, expect to receive a confirmation of your registration as well as a receipt of payment within a few minutes. Within a few days you will receive a welcome email with more information, including Zoom login details for our meetings and a link to the reading group’s password protected resource page. If you do not see these emails, please check your spam or junk folders in case they were diverted there. If you check these folders and still do not see these emails, email eric@quillwood.org and Eric will investigate what the problem is. In addition to these initial emails sent upon registration, Eric will send reminder emails 2 days and 2 hours before each meeting so the Zoom links are easy for you to find.
Facilitator
This reading group will be facilitated by Quillwood Academy’s founder, Eric Garza. Eric lives in Vermont’s Champlain Valley, in the Northeastern United States. He has facilitated dozens of educational events through Quillwood Academy, and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Vermont, and at other colleges and universities, for more than a decade. Eric spends much of his time pondering the skills and practices that will help us navigate today’s many converging crises. His approach to teaching draws on the two decades he has spent exploring educational pedagogy, along with his experience in various contemplative, martial, and place-based traditions. Eric has both European and Native American heritage. Read a more detailed bio here.
Pricing and Refund Policy
Registration for this reading group is offered on a donation basis, which can include a donation of zero. To register for this event, type the amount you want to pay in the “Choose Price” box at the top of this page, add the study group to your shopping cart, and check out. If you wish to register at no cost, type zero in the box and continue through the checkout process. You need to progress through all of the checkout steps to register for the event. If you encounter trouble with the checkout process, email eric@quillwood.org and Eric will do his best to help you.
In addition to paying via credit card or PayPal, you may also pay by personal check (drawn from US funds) or a money order (denominated in US dollars). Email Eric to arrange payment. If you choose to pay by check or money order, your registration is not complete until your funds are received and any checks clear. Checks and money orders should be made payable to Quillwood Academy.
The decision to offer this event on a donation basis emerges from Eric’s desire to explore the workings of gift-based economies and ecologies, a notion that Robin Wall Kimmerer explores in Braiding Sweetgrass. As you consider what to pay, reflect on the amount of income and wealth you have access to, the cost of living in your area, and what benefits participating in this reading group might offer you, both personally and professionally. Those who pay more make it possible for others to pay less—or pay nothing—while keeping the event financially viable. If you want guidance on what to pay, consider using the following sliding scale:
- Low income/wealth: $40
- Middle income/wealth: $125
- High income/wealth: $375
For transparency, the low income/wealth suggestion above roughly equates to paying for 11 hours of contact time (5 meetings where we discuss sections of the book for 2 hours, plus a 1 hour orientation) at half the current US federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr). The middle value equates to paying for 11 hours of time at half the current average US middle class hourly wage ($23.08/hr). The high value is 3 times the middle value.
The above suggestions are just that, suggestions. You get to decide what to pay, if you pay anything at all. No one will question your decision, or attempt to verify your income or access to wealth. The amount you pay will not impact how you are treated by the facilitator, and no details about participants’ monetary contributions or payment methods will be shared with anyone else in the reading group.
Participants can receive a full refund of their registration fee if they cancel their registration via email on or before Friday, May 24, 2024. After this date no refunds will be given except in extraordinary circumstances.